In the new header which is my new postcard the clarity is not as I expected. It looks nice, but I am picky. The first piece is oil. The second piece is watercolor and the Tiger is color pencil.
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Category Archives: color pencils
charcoal drawing
Adriana is drawing like this at 12! A six minute charcoal sketch. Life drawing is KEY! I can not express enough how Life Drawing will teach you every drawing element. It doesn’t matter what skill level you are at, Life Drawing is essential.
Graphite Drawing
Graphite drawing by Jordan. Learning to draw is not as hard as some make it. You need a good teacher; someone who understands realism and wants to teach you foundation. I can’t express enough how important Foundation learning is. You must learn to understand form and how to create it with warm and cool tones in graphite. Starting to draw with a “Hill and Valley” concept { which I created in my teaching experience } is key to understand more complex skill sets.
I guarantee I can teach you!!!
Starting to add tones and set form with values.
Oil painting, portrait painting
I painted to this point. The hands are wrong and letter, but it will be okay!
Intense pencils
Inktense pencils is an involved medium. It takes dedication and passion to learn the capabilities of the medium itself. I added a few pictures of a few different colors. Their value ranges are endless of creditability. Notice how the color can be watered thin for a very pale hue or value. 
When drawing with Inktense pencils you do not have to use water, leave the color as though a color pencil effect. You can draw over the wet surface; wet and dried. In the picture below Olivia started an Impressionistic painting.
The concept is after Artist Reed.
One very important fact; the colors Are Not always the color on the top of the pencils!!!! The color may be surprising when wet versus dry. So, check before you add a color to make sure that is what you want.
portrait painting
Oil painting is easy when you have knowledge about drawing forms. Realism in any medium is about layers and lighter layers of building forms. I will add more on this later, don’t have the time now, but stay tuned. This is titled, “The Un-sent Letter”. It is about a young woman sitting getting ready for her wedding day. She is holding a letter she never sent to an old love. It is about life decisions and “Letting Go” of the past’ heart wrenching. There will be several clues painted to add to the story, which line up with my recent photography. More to come.
Oil painting
Here we go again…..second canvas ready for new painting. I am working on an oil already titled, “The Un-sent Letter”. It is about a young woman reading the letter she never mailed to an old boyfriend on her wedding day. Second thoughts about walking down the aisle? I can’t answer that, but she is beautiful. Sometimes life decisions are made not knowing the end results, love I guess? Anyway; I started this first oil with the intention of painting looser than realistic. Good luck with that! Why do I beat myself up about my painting, drawing style? I paint and draw realistically and that’s how I role as an artist.
Here are pictures of the beginning work and the mannequin that is freaking people out in my wedding dress in a still life I put together for the painting. It is better to work from a still life vs. a photograph. 
The face is nice in the first oil but I painted over it thinking I was going to approach this with an Impressionistic style. I ended up wiping the paint off and well, it didn’t come out so well.
Art lessons in Easton, Pennsylvania
Notice the material on the smaller mannequin, the gray, silver color of the dress. A shiny material can have Refracted light which causes a Reflection in the valleys or deep parts of the folds. These folds are darker in tonal values on cotton for example. Drawing shiny material are small stokes, tedious lines of smooth value ranges. So, shiny material is classified as 102 level.
I added a few mannequins to my studio to help me and artist friends with Life drawing, foreshortening views and so on. I want you to notice how the eyeball is a sphere in a socket! Drawing spheres well will help you later on with drawing ans shading portraits.
Learning to see.
Learning to see the details around you; what a leaf or tree for example looks like when you are standing next to it versus how a tree or the detail of a leaf look in comparison farther away or distance. Take the time to look and notice color and how the color changes and the details or realistic details slightly become unfocused as they go back or a way from you in distance.
I advise you to start thinking about color or graphite in values [one to ten; light to darkest] for all colors as well as grays/blacks. Are they warm or cool in tone? Warm tones will come forward in space and cools will sink in space. The way God designed it, not an artist trick. Think about how color fades in distance and lack of detail in landscape.
Don’t worry so much about the name of the color printed on the tube of color, look to see if it is warm or cool in tone and where would you use it on form, shape etc.
Roxanne 